At first, the film does not catch anything: the action develops completely ugly, the dish is served cold and raw, but for sure it is part of the plan (as my review). The dialogues and actions of the characters are realistic and have no romance, but this realism hides a philosophical overtones, which, in turn, betrays romanticism in the arguments of the main character. That's the paradox. The GG monologue confirms my words.
It's not easy that I mentioned the monologue. It sounded like doctors diagnose a patient with an incurable disease. But it's like watching. For some, “cancer” may sound like a bolt from the sky (in fact, for most), and for someone (in fact, for a minority), as a relief. The main character is a minority. He doesn't care about people because they don't care about themselves. He is not going to make excuses for his actions, because he recognizes the animal principle in each of us and does not want to fight it, because he sees it as honesty with himself and nature. And all the rules that society has devised to punish him for actions that seem disgusting to them seem miserable and meaningless to him.
The meaning of life ceased to exist. There is only passion which has lost the character of the young desire for passion. Tautology.
Well, what about the actors? Gerard Depardieu is great, a great hit in the image. Nothing more to say, I can only thank you for your attention.
Having freed up a lot of space in Paris by his departure, the fat, fat and simply huge Monsieur Devereaux arrives in New York on a business visit. At home, the Frenchman has a lot of plans: on the initiative of his wife, he is going to run for president. In addition to affairs, without the supervision of the faithful, Devereux out of habit intends to play tricks on the side. And now in the hotel room, in the warm company of the initiates, a classic orgy unfolds, in which girls, drinks, dancing and sex are mixed into one. A young Devereaux should stop, but the greedy connoisseur of the female body does not know the measure. The next morning, the fatal attraction to a black maid subsequently turns into an arrest with a charge of rape.
A representative of the European elite overnight experiences all the procedures of justice: a camera-cage, a precious right to a phone call, a personal search, fingerprinting, the first appearance in court, bargaining lawyers for bail and house arrest. Devereaux’s only but powerful trump card is his influential wife Simon, who, cursing the faithful, still does not stand at the price of liberation. The arrest seems a trifle compared to the exaggeration from his wife - Simone will arrange this scene by renting a temporary apartment for house arrest in New York for a tidy sum.
I remember, after the scandal in the White House with Clinton, I had to hear a maxim that Americans are rubbish and, for example, in France, someone’s trips to the left would not cause the slightest excitement. After all, every self-respecting Frenchman builds a relationship with his mistress no less reverently than with his wife. This is not so much a joke as idle stupidity. In the same way, it is foolish to demand piety from the powerful; they are endowed with all the levers of opportunity so that their sins do not come out. And yet it comes up periodically - Monsieur Dominique Strauss-Kahn will confirm.
In New York, every scene is designed for unbiased documentary reflection. Gerard Depardieu is a magnitude, director Abel Ferrara could not find a more colorful figure. If you listen to yourself, the indignation and rejection of the main character will seem superficial and superfluous. After all, this everyday fat, repulsively sloppy and sometimes funny Devereaux is not a monster, although he calls himself so sly (the hero is pretty cunning in general). The old man who has become fat on money yeast is far from the hero-lover (how much did he have in bed there?), and to the maniac. Sexual cravings and courage Devereaux will surely envy his peers, his adventures are more caused by longing for a departing life than any disease. His behavior in public (questioning his daughter and his boyfriend about their sex, obsessive chatter with women around him) is more bravado and a way to forget. Devereaux’s immorality is mundane, it only reminds of the duplicity of others, especially those in his circle. He is happy that he can afford it, he is unhappy that every time he is exposed by his wife. Devereaux lies to her and will lie to her, everything is perfectly clear in him, except for two nuances. The first is the refusal (at least verbally) to become a politician, to fight for the presidency. This is not rejected, especially by people like Devereaux. The second “not falling” into the image is philosophical reasoning about one’s life and the fate of the world. They are absolutely implausible, such he could hang except for some naive interlocutor. Here's the final conversation with a female servant -- Devereaux and Depardieu in all their glory. After all, after all that happened - adventures in the hotel, arrest, publicity, a won trial and oaths of justification to his wife - the tirade of an incorrigible whore sounds. It clearly has a subtext - baby, I won't touch you yet, but that's for now. In this world, only those who are not caught are right. And the merit of the powerful duo Ferrara-Depardieu is that they did not try to make cinema cleaner than life outside cinemas around the world.
That awkward feeling when a movie poster causes more intrigue than the movie itself.
In 2015, I had a period when I decided to read the filmography of Gerard Depardieu, which is a shame to admit, but apart from Asterix and Obelix and 102 Dalmatians, I did not see him anywhere (and then in the last film I did not even know that he was there). He's also our citizen. I liked the films "Victor", "Rasputin", "Dream League", but "Welcome to New York" is not.
The plot is based on the story of former French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who once in New York got into a sex scandal, allegedly he raped a maid, it turned out to be fake, but Strauss-Kahn lost his political career. I don’t know if it’s a good movie or not.
The film begins with scenes of orgies in a New York hotel, where Depardieu copulates with prostitutes. I have mixed feelings about these scenes: on the one hand, they are of course nauseating, just like in Caligula 1979. and in this respect skillfully made, but on the other hand, during these scenes it is clear that Depardieu does not even pull his pants off. Then Depardieu is arrested and it is shown and filmed well (although naked Depardieu will come to me in nightmares forever). But then, when his wife releases him and some Katovasia begins.
I love when there are good dialogues in films that are a pleasure to listen to, but in this film it is not dialogue, the characters bring some nonsense, incoherent and shedding no light on anything.
You raped her.
- I didn't rape her. I'm just under... her mouth
Is that stupid? Aren't they the same? Or how Depardieu's hero tells his wife he's obsessed with sex. True, the dialogues are so stupid and incompetently written, somewhere on the level of our “Manticora”. That's why you made Strauss-Kahn look like some kind of sexual pervert. His case had political implications. And the creators could shoot a cool story about it, how the main character crossed the path of the Americans, he is set up in a hotel, he fights for his reputation, the greedy media are bullying him. Then you would show in the film both political intrigue and how the media affects public consciousness, as in "The Disappeared One" and the unhappy protagonist who is entangled in life.
But there's none of that in the movie. I don’t know what the creators wanted to show at all, there are no political intrigues, comprehension of life, some world scandal, which even the poster is better depicted as shackled Depardieu is photographed by journalists. I don't even remember the end of the film, what the middle was, because the film is so boring and boring that it makes you want to just turn it off. And it would be fine if the director offered some morality and philosophy, but there is none.
1 out of 10
To understand all these pigs, you just need to get tired. The dulling of the senses leads to debauchery, and it requires the immediate satisfaction of a whim.
Everyone makes mistakes. That's life. In 2011, one of France’s most influential political figures, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, made a fatal mistake when he decided to have oral sex with a maid from New York, who, unfortunately for a future presidential candidate, was also African-American. Three years later, another mistake was made by the world audience led by the President of the Cannes Film Festival Gilles Jacob, not seeing the value of Abel Ferrara’s wonderful film Welcome to New York, lost in the fog of political engagement.
But they learn from mistakes. Therefore, without dwelling on a superficial reading, and not trusting common, and most false speculations, it is necessary to subject the picture to a more detailed analysis and reveal its semantic organicity and stylistic saturation. She really has it all!
Considering this film, it is impossible not to mention another picture of Ferrara, released at the same time and telling about the life of Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. The tapes are deeply related to each other and together give a detailed picture of the intertwined themes of sex, politics and fate. First of all, it is necessary to note the existential identity of heroes, radically different in social criteria, but close in the spiritual sense. Purely formally, there is little in common between them: Devereaux (aka Strauss-Kahn) is an obvious protégé of “grand politics”, against which Pasolini devoted his mature years, the first lives in a world of brute matter and ruthless capital, the second inhabitant of a fragile universe of spirit and creativity. But they certainly agree on one thing. Both exist either under oppression or under the protection of an all-consuming, and at the same time enthralling sexual passion, which indirectly equalizes their fates. This “unhealthy” desire has long outgrown purely bodily needs and turned into a kind of “metaphysical necessity,” a spiritual sacrament guided only by them. It was in the realm of the flesh that they found the missing divine link that closed the chain of human existence. However, the main analogy lies not even in this, but in the punishment that both undergo. Objectively, the heroes fall victim to certain shadow structures of power, so powerful that even those with divine attributes are invisible, unknowable, inaccessible. But in the symbolic aspect of their fate can be interpreted as an inevitable retribution for the daring attempt to grow wings and fly to their personal sun.
One of the main reasons for the rejection of the film by the audience is its absolute disinterest and abstraction from the viewer. Ferrara offers no point of perception in relation to what is happening. The picture is neither a boyopik about the difficult fate of the hero’s personality, alone in its deviance, nor a political pamphlet, nor a critical social manifesto, nor an existential drama. The director tries to represent the situation as a “thing in itself”, but at the same time giving it extreme ambivalence. Ferrara leaves no point of reference for the public, but on the contrary, it seems to direct it in all directions at the same time. Devereaux appears at one moment as a beast that has lost its human form, at another as a delicately-feeling suitor and loving father, and at the third as a lone thinker, an idealist, either rejected or escaped from humanity. But deep down, there is only one Devereaux looking out at the world and his countless masks with the cold detachment of a Stoic. During the film, he seems to be undergoing a certain personal transformation, in connection with which Ferrara even introduces a deceptive symmetry of episodes - at the beginning, the hero makes the maid give him a blowjob, threateningly towering above her, and in the end, as if in repentance, he bows before his maid with the most pious appearance (a similar pre-image of the werewolf took place in "Bad Lieutenant"). Who said it wasn’t another mask? You don't understand these politicians.
The above-mentioned dialectical unity of Ferrar’s opposites is consistently carried out in a visual sense – rude, often repulsive physiology (a monument of which is Depardieu’s bloated body), scenes of violence and sex on the verge of pornography are replaced by prolonged and absolutely static dialogues and monologues, in which the characters are slowly, almost meditatively revealed. Naturally, the viewer is somewhat lost in such polarity and does not bother to turn it into a whole, in connection with which one half of the audience appreciated the film as meaningless black, and the other, on the contrary, as a clever boltology, saying little. In fact, if you try to merge the two poles, then through a diverse and intricate network of external meanings before us will appear the picture of the tragic self-contradiction of human existence itself, which is always a) eternally different (like Devereaux in the film), b eternally aimless (as the narrative of the picture itself) and c eternally meaningless (or rather open to any semantic readings, which is the same).
So, now you can fully describe the totality of the artistic merits of the film. First, it is necessary to note its hyper-documentality, anti-partisanship and freedom from the slightest form of imposition of author’s opinion. Everyone will see in the tape what he wants, Devereaux will become for one another another political creature, and for the other a tragic hero (the truth is that he is both and neither of them, since both definitions are only projections on his very essence). Secondly, the Ferreri tape is characterized by a radical relativism of meaning, which also dominates our existence. No one can determine what is true and what is false, where is real sin, and where is political provocation, how to draw a line between the individual and society. It seems that all the spheres merged in one mirror plane of the eternal simulacrum and reflected in each other countless times. Thirdly, the film is characterized by high quality of technical performance and graceful visual form. Strictly symmetrical shots and episodes, well-chosen coloristics and measured, literally sucking into themselves, trevveling, accompanying most of the timekeeping, cannot but please the eye, and the outstanding acting game of Depardieu and Bisset do not have to be interested in the characters of their heroes.
In general, it is worth noting that the viewer accustomed to being led by the powerful hand of the artist will be disappointed with the film of Ferrara. This is not the usual movie carousel, on which you can passively ride for an hour and a half, paying for the entrance. No, it is a cast from life itself, with all its tragic contradictions, hopeless antinomies, pain and joy, which very rarely lie on the surface, but are experienced somewhere in the depths of our being, under the fat layers of meaningless ordinaryity. Ferrara is guilty only of trying to portray something new and radically different from modern fast-paced, super-dramatic and super-cinematic boyopics, in which almost nothing remains of real life. And naturally received, like his heroes, charges under all articles. Well, everybody makes mistakes. That's life.
On May 14, 2011, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-kan, who was at the time one of the leaders of the presidential race in the Fifth French Republic, was arrested on charges of harassment committed by him during his stay in the United States against an employee of the hotel Nafisattou Diallo, a 32-year-old native of Guinea, not particularly beautiful. Having already had the plume of a sexual scandalist, however, by the time of the memorable elections relatively forgotten, Strauss-Kahn was dealt a severe blow to his reputation, which put an end to his entire political career, although gradually this case fell apart in court, as well as all subsequent ones, who attributed to the honorable monsieur multiple deviant promiscuities with girls of different ages and degrees of maturity. The frankly political taste of this incident did not add points to Strauss-Kahn’s competitors, nor to the entire modern near-state and pro-government system of what is European, what is American, what is Asian or Russian, in which it is impossible to play honestly, and the best PR is always macabrian and virgin black.
Modern cinema responded to this undoubtedly intriguing story surprisingly quickly, and already in 2014, the cult American director and screenwriter Abel Ferrara, whose best films remained, unfortunately, far behind in the past (the most noticeable picture of it in the zero years can be considered the acutely religious and bluephile parable "Maria" in 2005) in the framework of the Cannes Film Festival presented his last film work - the film "Welcome to New York", which in fact became a kind of ornate cinematic rethinking of the real sexual scandal that took place in the past with the participation of the ex-president of the IMF and the ex-president of Stroika. Here it should be clearly noted that around this tape has already arisen a scandal, because Strauss-Kahn himself sued its creators for slander, and the tape, originally positioned as almost a realistic biographical narrative, is by no means such, and the picture of Ferrara left Cannes unstoppably breadwinner, failing to get either the proper attention of the press, or even the audience and critics.
Welcome to New York is the late Abel Ferrara, who is still ascetic and minimalist as a director, but much less religious and polemical in his speculative conclusions and philosophical researches. Taking as the basis of his two-hour narration the famous scramble scandal, in fact Ferrara chose to completely abandon direct parallels with the prosaic biased and overpoliticized reality, immersed the viewer in a moderate and restrained cinematic convention, in which a certain Mr. Devereaux, dressed in power and money, plays Gerard Depardieu, lives.
Gradually losing the reputation of the leading French actor of our time, a kind of eccentric movie genius, Depardieu in the film of Ferrara is extremely interesting and convincing within the framework of the direct-linear dramaturgy set by the director, sculpting the image of not so much a real Strauss-Kahn as a certain mythologized generalization of a person from power, subject to all existing vices and living above the world, strictly according to his own rules. We can even safely say that Ferrara, having started from the incident with Strauss-Kahn, removed as his own interpretation of McQueen’s “Shame”, surrounding his semi-real hero with a mass of temptations, which the sin is not to give in, and continued the artistic line, started in “The Killer with an electric drill” and “Bad Lieutenant”, because there are many things in common between Devereaux and, for example, Lieutenant. Both are in a borderline state, both are subject to the inner corruption of their own depravity and sophistication, devouring them from within, and both heroes are destined to go through a series of trials in order to finally find the desired salvation not of the soul but of the body, to receive a cathartic irredentistic forgiveness both in their own eyes and in the eyes of society as a whole.
The way of salvation for the Lieutenant was littered with corpses and sugar coke, and for Devereaux - through multiple litigation, family melodramas and corporate dramas, shown by moments of skillful realistic stroke of the cinematographer, and moments and frankly satirical and grotesque, with elements of sharp attacks in the direction of the modern political and economic system, giving rise to such typical ersatz scoundres as Devereaux, bathed in luxury, money, women (up to a certain fateful stage), and openly satirically and grotesquely, with elements of his own shoulder, because Eros was more enjoying his own shoulder. And New York, chosen as the director and as the place of a real scandal, in the film Ferrara acquires the features of an unreal City of Sins and Temptations, pressing its heap of skyscrapers with a metropolis in which it is easy to get lost and confused, and in which even the largest cone, firmly holding the gonads of the second and third world states, is just a grain of sand and a toy in the hands of not that God, not that Devil, staring from all the windows and crevices of millions of offices and hotels, in which, for a slight sympathy for a representative of the latter, can be taken away to death.
And in the scenes of seduction and actual rape, which is so famous for Mr. Ferrara, who knows a lot about wool theft (it is noteworthy that the main victim in the picture, the wife as the main victim, played by a sex bomb of the 70-80s). Jacqueline Bisset is extremely seductive and more in line with the classic femme fatale type than Diallo’s unsympathetic real sacrifice, which makes any resemblance to a real scandal in the film disappear completely, and in intense court battles the film looks extremely convincing and dramatic, although with each new scene the great realism and political context recedes, and it is replaced by existentialism and the problems of eternal moral choice for the main antagonist, who is tormented by Shakespeare’s nightmares of being and self-consciousness, who is trying to understand who he is, and now begin to taminate from the inside. In the pursuit of his own Libido and Superego, Devereaux managed to lose a lot, and by the end of the picture it becomes even pitiful, because the tempted one himself was inexperienced in political and sexual intrigues, and having become a victim for real, he realized that succumbing to the power of the basic instinct is extremely dangerous for career and health. New York became his trap, and he broke out of it completely different, because as the simple and eternal truth goes: “Through dirt lies the path to happiness,” as well as to a renewed reputation, to restored relationships and to a new self. Clean, white and fluffy.
Depardieu is not the first time, oh how not the first time to play a strong personality, spitting on the rules. Danton, Rodin, Vidoc, Cyrano, Columbus, Vatel, Rasputin... Scale. Scale! But in this film, the powerful man of this world (who never became president of France, Strauss-Kahn), so big, so influential, somehow finds himself in a small, small mousetrap prison. And when he gets there, he almost realizes he's been there all his life. And its size is the same. The hero went down the path of reducing himself. Decrease is destruction. And, like an actor who doesn’t like to play the same role on stage year after year, he sawed his own stage to finally stop acting and feel alive (“I only feel alive when I make love to a woman”).
The whole film is quite simple and therefore very sharp opposition. Life versus politics, instincts versus mask games, "I'm a monster" versus "you have to save face." And in the final there is no problem. Only hopeless and, in general, addressed to no one, except in a yawning emptiness: “I feel nothing,” “no one can save anyone,” “I have only lost my sense of self-worth.” A naive, naive professor from a devoted and sold past. No flowers on the grave of your idealism will stop its stench!
Faulkner, in his Nobel speech in 1950, attacked all modern literature. He said, “Writers and writers have forgotten the problems of the struggling soul. But only these problems give rise to worthy literature. The writer will have to learn again. He needs to understand that fear is the most base of feelings, and having comprehended this, he must forget about fear forever, remove everything from his work except the truth about the soul, the old eternal truths - love, honor, pity, pride, compassion and self-sacrifice, without which any work is doomed to speedy death. And until the writer does, the curse hangs over his work. He writes not of love but of lust; of defeats in which no one loses anything of value, of victories without hope, and, worst of all, without pity and compassion. In his grief there is no understandable grief, and it leaves no deep traces. He does not write about the human soul, but about the disturbances of the body. And until he understands this, he will write as if he stands and watches the end of man and participates in the end. But I refuse to accept the end of man.
These words - and they are more than 60 years old - are relevant to this day. Including for the movie, judging by what shows Ferrara.
Most likely, speaking of the “end of man” in literature, Faulkner meant Camus and his relatives. Abel Ferrara, in his new film, writes... about defeats in which no one loses anything of value, victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity and compassion. Reminds me of "Alien"? He writes as if he stands and watches the end of man and participates in the end. What is the atmosphere of the Plague? “Be careful when descending from the escalator” (one of the first phrases of the film sounds at the airport). Yeah. How does it smell like Trier and his "Nymphomaniac" (remember the final descent of the heroine?), and not "Shame" Steve McQueen, as they said at the discussion of the film in the club. There was shame in Shame!
The beginning of the film contains a quite optimistic message - we are shown a statue of Rochambeau, a French military commander, a hero of the War of Independence. The idea is clear: we love the French. Then the authors will show exactly how to love the citizens of the Fifth Republic.
The story of Strauss-Kahn is well covered by the press, two points are worth mentioning. In 2011, the protagonist declared the need for a new world economic system, because the old (Washington Consensus) brought the world economy to crisis. Given Strauss-Kahn’s political position and electoral ratings, France could have a president capable of pursuing an independent foreign policy. A sex scandal destroyed the career of the director of the IMF, and the presidential chair was taken by someone with a babe face of a catfish, dutifully weaving in the wake of American politics (the story with the Mistrals).
The honorary citizen of Saransk is the real Mr. Sex. Depardieu in this film shines with beauty, according to all articles he is like Cupid. Pink cellulite folds, elastic abdomen, even his nose has a phallic shape. The awkward erotic scenes involving a Russian citizen suggest that he has moved into the category of “we are not womanizers, we are drunkards.” Having undressed the next girl, the actor fussily grabs her by the shoulders, by the arms, falls on his belly (threatening to crush the poor entrails), it is obvious that he remembers - women are needed, but he does not remember why.
The director constantly plays the corpulence of the hero. Each tilt of the body, turn, squat, is accompanied by a powerful roar, wheezing, snorting, shortness of breath and moaning. The meaning is clear, before us is a beast, a hefty animal that moved against the background of its own sexual cult. Ferrara, the former mad dog of independent cinema, who viciously tore the social fabric in his early films, has now turned into an old, room lapdog, bustlingly chewing his master's slippers with toothless gums.
Taking the official version on faith, the director follows the most conformist path. Strauss - Kahn is bred by a sexual maniac, a miserable slave of his dick. The second conciliatory tale is the story that the entire career of the candidate for the presidency was built by his wife (a pronaphthalene tale that behind every famous man there is a woman). And this is an independent film? Where is your own version, different from the official position? Where is the skepticism of all independent minds? Where's the critical approach? There is none of this, there is a lack of desire to think independently, apparently from independence there was only a well-fed Depardieu ass in the frame.
Strauss - Kahn did not deny ties to the maid, insisting their meeting "was planned." The personality of the unfortunate is not a mystery, from the photo a creature looks with the face of a heavily drinking Yeltsin and the body of a hippopotamus, miraculously squeezed into the form of a maid. The unearthly beauty should be glad that she was happy with the director of the IMF. Police have a recording of the phone conversation, which indicates that the “rape” was planned, the maid shared plans for a relatively honest take of money from a wealthy client. It was like a joke:
My granddaughter thinks you want to rape me.
- That you are a grandmother, and did not hold in mind!
- You have to.
Then it turned out that the honest maid had about a hundred thousand American dollars (a salary for three hundred years of immaculate service), that she was connected to the drug trade, and also did not mind comforting lonely, bored guests with her luxurious body. Thus, the version about the rape of a ferocious sexual maniac unkissed, chaste forty-year-old girl, this version collapses with a crash. This is where the Ferrara film is built. As one character used to say, congratulations, citizen of a liar!
The film makes a miserable impression. Tough scenes imitating debauchery are replaced by boring conversations of the protagonist and his wife, as well as his monologues about morality (taking into account the biography, they could be published in a separate volume in the series “Great Moralists Advise”). Putting into the mouth of the main character the words that “it is necessary to break out of the herd” Ferrara with this film drove himself into the center of a bleating, sleepy chewing flock. However, there is nothing unexpected here. The funeral, filmed in 1996, turned out to be the burial of the director’s talent, everything filmed after is a monotonous chewing of senile snot.
I really wanted the film Abel Ferrara to rehabilitate in my eyes the very respected me as an actor Gerard Depardieu after the terrible and disastrous Rasputin. But not fate. At least not in this film, where neither Depardieu nor other actors, nor the picture as a whole did not work out.
I will immediately say that not only Gerard plays poorly in the tape Ferrara, but also everyone else engaged in the project, however, since Depardieu is the main one, then the demand is primarily from him. The famous Frenchman, playing another, no less famous Frenchman, (I think no one is misled by a leaky fig leaf in the form of a remark in the credits about fictional heroes and random coincidences) does not make any effort at all to convincingly or even somehow convey the strong feelings and emotions that, in theory, should have been 90% of this role. For the sake of fairness, except for a couple of scenes, in particular, in prison, where at some moments you believe in the shock, confusion and complete stunning Devereaux. Here Depardieu remembered that he is still an actor, whose authority obliges to something, and played well. But alas, these moments were only an exception against the general background of the depressing picture of his complete indifference to his character, and the tape in general, and therefore we have almost undisguised serving of the number to talented actors. So, as if he believes that the mere appearance of his impressive figure in the frame should cause the viewer a sacred awe, and everything else - like a map will lie down.
It is sad to look at all this, and for the second time in a row after the simple and stamped myths of Rasputin performed by Gerard. Again, for the sake of truth, I must say that the blame for this lies not only on Depardieu, but also on the director with the screenwriters who concocted an absolutely incompetent, biased and biased plot. Since you are shooting a movie strongly “based on” a particular famous person, you should at least try to objectively show the complexity of her nature, contradictions, not bypassing the sharp angles of shortcomings, but also not bypassing the advantages. Moreover, in the scandalous story with Strauss-Kahn left a lot of questions and white spots. But where? On the screen, we witness the embodiment of vices in all “beauty” – a hero who turned his life into a series of continuous drunks and orgies, sleeps with almost everything that moves and, if you believe the creators of the film, is fixated on sex to the point that it fits to send him to several hospitals of different profiles at once, and not to the presidential election. I have never been and will not be a fan of Strauss-Kahn, and I am not familiar with the details of his biography, but banker Devereux seems completely implausible under any conditions, even if you consider him as an independent character, without allusions to a particular political and financial figure And implausible so much that the picture of Ferrara begins to look quite clearly like a political order. Plus, the manner of pseudo-documentary shooting chosen by the authors, when the camera simply follows Devereaux, recording his adventures on film like a documentary chronicle, is not suitable for a film of this kind absolutely, it practically removed all feelings and passions from the picture - actors emotionally pronounce words without putting any experiences into them, and even one-on-one dialogues look lifeless, completely devoid of the spark of feeling.
I also have a personal wish for Gerard. It's clearly time for him to do something about himself. We are talking about his overweight, extra pounds actor in recent years gained more than a dozen. It is time for him to stop and pay attention to his condition. Because Depardieu himself seems to believe that everything is in order and in the course of the film does not hesitate to repeatedly undress in front of the camera, and in one episode he is completely exposed, appearing in all his invisible beauty. And when Devereaux in one of the episodes categorically declares that he is in “beautiful shape”, you do not know at all whether to laugh or cry, looking at this good man, who has become so much.
However, despite the failure of the film "Welcome to New York", I believe in "Gerard Depardieu". I hope that in the next film with him, which, in all likelihood, should be Victor, I will see a former talented charismatic actor who will refute all my incipient doubts about whether he can still say a valid word in the movie. I'm waiting and hoping.
As for another main figure in the picture Ferrara - Simone, whose role was played by Jacqueline Bisset, we have to say that she played absolutely in the tone Depardieu, and if to say frankly - also served the number and also except for two or three small episodes. I never saw any feelings or valuable thoughts on her part, except hints.
All other actors passed solid gray and faceless mass, no character remains in memory after five minutes after leaving the cinema.
In a good way, the film Welcome to New York does not deserve one point, but out of great respect for Gerard Depardieu and a couple of glimpses of acting that I noticed from him and Jacqueline Bisset in this film, I will be generous at once by three. But my patience, dear Gerard, may soon come to an end, so pull yourself together. In every way.
Already in 2011, it was obvious that the United States in a couple of years will shoot a kinzo about what a nasty villain this Dominic Strauss-Kahn. When I heard that Abel Ferrara was working on the film, I was very surprised. At first I thought that maybe this is a normal and more or less honest film, and not the political order. But no, this is exactly the sweet filth of Pindostan, which was doomed to its appearance. Oh, I did not expect Ferrar to participate in this star-striped and stinking propaganda.
The whole world still remembers the story of American President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. But someone like Strauss-Kahn has already forgotten everything. It is necessary to remind in all colors... And they paint us a vivid picture of a lust-obsessed, disgusting fat fool who fucks everything he sees, ending in five seconds. We're just being spit on the screen, that he's nothing and that his whole career is his wife's work. Of course, there is no hint of him infuriating the Washington rulers. He is portrayed as someone who doesn’t want to be president at all, only wants to fuck. In fact, he was the main contender in the upcoming 2012 presidential elections in France, while Pindostan actively promoted the candidacy of Hollande. It is curious that the film appeared on our screens right now, when Hollande (already becoming president), suddenly for the star-striped completely ceased to obey them and does not want to carry out orders on sanctions against Russia. But during the campaign, he looked like a clear Russophobe. What we have in the end, Strauss-Kahn’s guilt has never been proven, but his political career has been completely ruined. What happened to Bill in the late nineties? Several indistinct court hearings in general did not affect his political career, and the emergence of the informal status of “real man” among the simple-minded people.
It is sad to see Gerard Depardieu degenerate. I'm not talking about his acting skills, he's still pretty good. Just before his participation in most cases meant the quality of the film, and now what he only does not participate in. After Rasputin, now this... You can’t say he didn’t know what he was doing. This picture begins with Depardieu in the role of himself declares that he despises politicians and that he likes to play scoundrels to laugh at them from the inside.
In the end, Abel Ferrara tried to philosophize a little through his hero, who issued a monologue more suitable for the hero of his previous film (4:44 Last Day on Earth). Not only did this monologue strongly deviate from the image painted earlier, but the content did not seem clever. At least for deep reflection, this monologue, like the whole film, is unlikely to push anyone.
Don't ask me why Abel Ferrara suddenly decided to write the story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and put it in person. I would understand if the story was commissioned by the head of the International Monetary Fund himself, and in the film he was a victim of circumstances, but Ferrara does everything to portray Strauss-Kahn as a man obsessed with sex, who only thinks about him, entertains with prostitutes, random women and rapes elderly black maids who turn into his arm. At the same time, he is an absolute nothingness, which Gerard Depardieu skillfully portrays - from his naive Frenchman who has drunk his face, from whom his wife, a holy woman, has sculpted the President of France all his life, and would have done - if he had not made this monstrous mistake, falling into the hands of a tenacious American justice.
Even if you know the story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as well as I know it, it’s still exciting to watch the movie — if the filmmakers invent something that makes it unique. But, alas, it never happened. The main revelation is that the highest post may be a pervert and a plebeian.
Don’t ask me why the director, or maybe Gerard Depardieu, needed a confession at the beginning of the film that Depardieu didn’t like politicians, that he was an anarchist, but that he liked to play people he didn’t like. What was that?! Abel Ferrar's confession of love for his beloved Depardieu? Yes, Gerard is great, even as a politician, even as a base loser and sexaholic Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
The film is not outstanding, but curious. You can see it. Besides, this is, in my opinion, the best work of Gerard Depardieu in recent times. It has a unique quality. Even in disgusting form, with a saggy belly and bloated face, he does not cause rejection when shown completely naked - that is what true charisma means.
Abel Ferrara is a medium-sized director. He doesn’t seem to make empty movies. And he's missing a break. Maybe he was hoping that the real story would lead him into a cohort of celestials. But it didn't happen again.
The very case when an obvious propaganda “trick”, little understood for the uninitiated element in a confusing information combination associated with a real person of modernity turns out to be in the top ten. The secret of this strange combination is simple, and his name is Abel Ferrara. Obviously, the budget for the film was allocated not by fans of film history, but the fact that Abel Ferrara sat behind the director's chair was an impeccable move. He managed to create such a depraved atmosphere of New York that he immediately remembered “Bad cop”.
Orgies, prostitutes, expensive hotels - all this is shown as realistically as Gerard Depardieu's big belly looks true. A light laugh of another beauty gives an unpleasant truth - and after all, our hero speaks more about his desire than he really is a "Don Juan." It is true that those who call themselves leaders and swim confidently in the asphalt jungle of financial corporations are in fact only a parody of brave alpha males. Ferrara goes far beyond the known history with the vile smell of a conspiracy combination. This is a reflection on modern power, the relationship between the place of a politician in society and the importance of his personality. How exactly demonstrates the change of his mood Gerard Depardieu, reminding everyone of the presence of outstanding acting talent. His sad look at the prison wall, details of a personal search, candid and shocking confessions to his wife, parties and philosophical conversations are just perfect.
And despite the fact that I did not like the chewed ending too much, as well as the bombastic and completely inappropriate from Depardieu’s mouth, a rebellious in fact epigraph, I can not help but give this tape a rating less than -
Naked Depardieu or what else could hook this movie.
“Welcome to New York” is difficult for me to call a film, I took it more as a partially documentary with a number of ero scenes. Depardieu, in my opinion, played a little stiff (although it is understandable, given the peculiarities of his character) and sometimes there was a feeling that he was not saying his dialogue. Although, again, I don’t know the person that he played, perhaps he was in life.
History is more of a personal character, a history of self-exploration, than a history of politics and justice. The hero of the film admits his sin, his mistakes, and at the same time denies any accusations or understanding from people. This is a typical feature of today’s world politicians, in whose garden a couple of stones were thrown.
Among the pluses, I will highlight several dialogues in the film, including (and to a greater extent) dialogue with the character’s wife, actress Jacqueline Bisset. And so, I can not call my review either positive or negative, since the movie, to put it mildly, is not the most interesting and not for general viewing.
Honestly, European cinema, at times, is so different from American cinema that, when approaching viewing, you have to take this into account. Habit-c, you know, is required.
And it is this European unusualness that runs through the entire tape of Mr. Ferrara, and it does not come from actors. However, both the main characters ... although ..., about that a little later.
The film is fiercely divided into two halves, each of which is so different from the second that it is simply impossible to imagine them as one whole - in fact, this is one of the disadvantages of the film, which incredibly underestimates the final score. In truth, I was able to watch the first hour of the story with great difficulty. Maybe I didn’t understand something, maybe the director was so subtle that I didn’t have enough erudition or something to see them, but the first half of the picture, except for the scenes of a naturalistically sexual nature, caused me nothing but bewilderment and irritation.
Right word, to watch the lean description of the existence of an American prisoner is frankly boring. Moreover, the author devotes such a long time to this aspect that personally I almost made the mistake of turning off the film. Separate disgust, and this is apparently the idea of the director, cause scenes of bareness Depardieu. Honestly, I haven’t seen anything so unpleasant in a long time. Even the morsels of the little man from "Sabotage" with Schwarzenegger, viewed earlier, caused less hostility.
But all this applies only to the first hour of the film and is partially compensated in the second, starting with the scene where Simon (the delightful Jacqueline Bisset) finally crosses paths with her husband. In fact, I want to celebrate the outstanding performance of this beautiful actress. Such accurate, honest and professional work, indeed, does her no less honor than her beauty, which has hardly been erased for years. To tell you the truth, when I took care of this issue and found out that next year it was her 70th birthday, I was surprised and delighted. Not many people manage to survive so well and at the same time demonstrate the skill of this level in their work.
By the way, going back to the beginning of the review - this is what the director apparently pursued when he invited to his film for the main roles Bisset and Depardieu. Bright European acting school fell as hard as possible to the court and shaded the boredom that swept over the first half of the film.
The second segment of the picture produces an extremely holistic and rich impression, despite the fact that in fact very few events occur in the frame. But they are very saturated and not needed. Especially with the appearance of certain excursions of the protagonist into philosophical reflections. Although it can not be said that these are some revelations or breaks of patterns, but sometimes it is useful to break away from the routine and look at the world with a fresh look.
In general, the film will clearly appeal to people prone to contemplation and reflection, lovers of the so-called arthouse and author’s European cinema, as well as those who appreciate extremely high-quality and bright acting work. It will definitely not like people who are interested in the court case, which served as the basis of the plot and those who want to just relax in the evening (in the first half you can inadvertently fall asleep). The same applies to those who are attracted by the erotic aspect - it is even quite frank, but absolutely naked Depardieu, it is unlikely that someone will cause a surge of excitement.
That's about it. Due to the slurred first half and general sluggishness:
No one expected Ferra to be attracted to scandalous journalism, and yet somehow he was attracted to the story. Politics and sex. Two themes that will live forever. Can a person in power use this power to achieve his own pleasure and what awaits him?
The film consists of three parts. Devereaux (Depardieu) has everything that moves. In the second he has the judicial system, and in the third - his own wife (Bisset) (for everything, including his unfulfilled dreams of becoming the first lady of France).
Vital and jovial Depardieu here is what is worth looking at first. Well, morality - you have to pay for relevance, apparently, will never lose.
Overall, the film was more successful. Depardieu 5 for acting (you could all 10 calmly), for the plot 2 points (it could be more dynamic), and 2 points for topicality. That's 9 out of 10.
On May 14, 2011, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-kan, who was at the time one of the leaders of the presidential race in the Fifth French Republic, was arrested on charges of harassment committed by him during his stay in the United States against an employee of the hotel Nafisattou Diallo, a 32-year-old native of Guinea, not particularly beautiful. Having already had the plume of a sexual scandalist, however, by the time of the memorable elections relatively forgotten, Strauss-Kahn was dealt a severe blow to his reputation, which put an end to his entire political career, although gradually this case fell apart in court, as well as all subsequent ones, who attributed to the honorable monsieur multiple deviant promiscuities with girls of different ages and degrees of maturity. The frankly political taste of this incident did not add points to Strauss-Kahn’s competitors, nor to the entire modern near-state and pro-government system of what is European, what is American, what is Asian or Russian, in which it is impossible to play honestly, and the best PR is always macabrian and virgin black.
Modern cinema has responded to this undoubtedly intriguing story surprisingly quickly, and already in 2014, the cult American director and screenwriter Abel Ferrara, whose best films were, unfortunately, far behind in the past (the most noticeable picture of it in the zero years can be considered the acutely religious and bluephile parable "Maria" in 2005), in the framework of the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival presented his last film work - the film "Welcome to New York", which in fact became a kind of ornate cinematic rethinking of the existing sexual scandal with the participation of the ex-head of the ex-President. Here it should be clearly noted that around this tape there has already been a scandal, because Strauss-Kahn himself sued its creators for slander, and the tape, originally positioned as almost a realistic biographical narrative, is by no means such, and the picture of Ferrara left Cannes unsolicited breadwinner, failing to get the proper attention of the press, spectators and critics.
Welcome to New York is the late Abel Ferrara, who is still ascetic and minimalist as a director, but much less religious and polemical in his speculative conclusions and philosophical researches. Taking as the basis of his two-hour narration the famous scramble scandal, in fact Ferrara chose to completely abandon direct parallels with the prosaic biased and overpoliticized reality, immersed the viewer in a moderate and restrained cinematic convention, in which a certain Mr. Devereaux, dressed in power and money, plays Gerard Depardieu, lives.
Gradually losing the reputation of the leading French actor of our time, a kind of eccentric cinema genius, Depardieu in the film of Ferrara is extremely interesting and convincing within the framework of the direct drama set by the director, sculpting the image not so much of a real Strauss-Kahn as a certain mythologized generalization of a person from power, subject to all existing vices and living above the world, strictly according to his own rules. We can even safely say that Ferrara, having started from the incident with Strauss-Kahn, removed as his own interpretation of McQueen’s “Shame”, surrounding his semi-real hero with a mass of temptations, which the sin is not to give in, and continued the artistic line, started in “The Killer with an electric drill” and “Bad Lieutenant”, because there are many things in common between Devereaux and, for example, Lieutenant. Both are in a borderline state, both are subject to the inner corruption of their own depravity and sophistication, devouring them from within, and both heroes are destined to go through a series of trials in order to finally find the desired salvation not of the soul but of the body, to receive a cathartic irredentistic forgiveness both in their own eyes and in the eyes of society as a whole.
The way of salvation for the Lieutenant was dotted with corpses and sugar coke, and for Devereaux - through multiple litigation, family melodramas and corporate dramas, shown by moments of skillful realistic stroke of the cinematographer, and moments and frankly satirically and grotesquely, with elements of sharp attacks on the side of the modern political and economic system, giving rise to such typical ersatz scoundres as Devereaux, bathed in luxury, money, women (up to a certain fateful stage), and openly satirically and grotesquely, with elements of his own, because Eros was more enjoying his own shoulder. And New York, chosen as the director and as the place of a real scandal, in the film Ferrara acquires the features of an unreal City of Sins and Temptations, pressing its heap of skyscrapers with a metropolis in which it is easy to get lost and confused, and in which even the largest cone, firmly holding the gonads of the second and third world states, is just a grain of sand and a toy in the hands of not that God, not that Devil, staring from all the windows and crevices of millions of offices and hotels, in which, for a slight sympathy for a representative of the latter, can be taken away to death.
And in the scenes of seduction and actual rape, which is so famous for Mr. Ferrara, who knows a lot about wool theft (it is noteworthy that the victim in the picture, played by a sex bomb of the 70-80s). Jacqueline Bisset, extremely seductive and more consistent with the type of classic femme fatale, than the unsympathetic victim Diallo, which makes any similarity with the real scandal in the film disappears completely), and in intense court battles the film looks extremely convincing and dramatic, although with each new scene the great realism and political context recedes, and it is replaced by existentialism and the problems of eternal moral choice for the main antagonist, who is tormented by Shakespeare’s questions of being and self-consciousness, who is trying to understand who is now, and his nightmares begin to be tortured from the inside. In the pursuit of his own Libido and Superego, Devereaux managed to lose a lot, and by the end of the picture it becomes even pitiful, because the tempted one himself was inexperienced in political and sexual intrigues, and having become a victim for real, he realized that succumbing to the power of the basic instinct is extremely dangerous for career and health. New York became his trap, and he broke out of it completely different, because as the simple and eternal truth says: “Through dirt lies the path to happiness” and to a renewed reputation, to restored relationships and to a new self. Clean, white and fluffy.